This article is written by Arunkumar Deshmukh, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.

Blog Day :

3642

Post No. :

14470

Today’s song is from an almost unknown film ‘Haqdaar’ (1946).

There were two more films with the same title, made in 1964 and 1981. The love of Hindi films for identical titles is well known. In silent films, the situation was different. There used to be one name for Censor Certificate and then in every linguistic state the film would have one local name for the film, to attract local audience. In talkie films, this facility was absent, as everywhere, the film name is the same.

Thus, we find that there was/is ‘Same Name Confusion’ even in film titles. But of course, the system of mentioning the year, made them different, like ‘Haqdaar’ (1946), ‘Haqdaar’ (1964) or ‘Haqdaar’ (1981) etc. Here again confusion was whether the year of Censor Certificate should be mentioned or the year of film’s release. Standard documents, like HFGK, give only the year of Censor Certificate, irrespective of the film’s release year. Regular users of HFGK know this very well. Usually most films are released quickly and very few take time to get released.

Shri Harmandir Singh Hamraaz ji has published a Film Index for films made between 1931 to 2012. I went through this list to find out about the same name titles. Films made 2 times and 3 times are many and beyond count. However, on counting detailed way, I found 80 film titles repeated 4 times, 23 films repeated 5 times and 5 films repeated 6 times. Above all, there is ONE film whose title is repeated 7 times. The name is ‘Insaaf’. It was made at regular intervals – almost every decade. It was made in 1937, 1946, 1956, 1866, 1973, 1987 and 1997! The person who had registered the name first, must have earned a lot!

‘Haqdaar’ of 1946 was directed by Rafiq Rizvi, who had worked as assistant to AR Kardar. He was brother of lyricist Ehsan Rizvi. His first film as an independent director was ‘Waida’ (1940). Then came ‘Awaaz’ (1942), ‘Koshish’ (1943), ‘Haqdaar'(1946), ‘Alladin Ka Beta’ (1955) and lastly ‘Kaarvan’ (1956). Thereafter he migrated to Pakistan.

The Music Director was Mohd Shafi (25-12-1925 to 30-4-1980). He was one of those talented artists of Hindi Film Music who was only used by others and never got enough credit for his work. He is honoured as the ‘The Original Arranger’ in the industry. He was an excellent sitar player. He started with Imperial Film company, where he played Bulbul Tarang. In 1937 he went to Calcutta, joined New Theatres and played Sitar in films ‘Kapaal Kundala’ (1939) and ‘Aandhi’ (1940), as an assistant to Pankaj Mullick and KC Dey. He played sitar in the film ‘Ujaala’ (1942). In this film, the hero – Prithviraj Kapoor played the role of a sitar player, hence the expertise of Shafi was fully utilised in this film.

Starting with film ‘Haqdaar’, he gave music to 19 Hindi films and 2 Marathi films. He worked with Naushad, as his assistant and arranger, for 14 years. He was considered a ‘Daada’ in background music. He gave background music to about 70 films (for Naushad and others). For ‘Mughal e Azam’ (1960), K Asif used to send his personal car to fetch him to studio. It was Shafi who gave the first break to Suman Hemmadi (Kalyanpur) in ‘Mangu’ (1954).

Shafi had bought his first car when he was just 15 year old. He had a posh flat in Shivaji Park area of Dadar in Bombay. In the end , everything was gone.He had helped the families of Shakeel Badayuni and Ghulam Mohammed after their deaths. However in his last difficult days, except Rafi, no one came for his help. In the final few months, his memory had gone. His begum ruefully said,” Good that he does not remember anything. All took his advantage and gave him nothing. There were more things to forget than to remember!”

It is said that the entire music of ‘Sohni Mahiwal’ (1958) was done by him. Naushad was sick during this period and did not attend even one recording. “Do Hanson Ka Joda” and “Dhundho Dhundho Re Saajna” from ‘Gunga Jamuna’ (1961) were his creations. He used to give tunes to many composers too – whoever asked for help.

Harish was also known as Tara Harish. Tara Harish – this name is quite misleading. At first glance, it looks lie a woman’s name. On second thoughts, one feels it must be a pair of persons like Krishnan Panju or Aruna Vikas. But this is name of a single person, who was an actor, producer, director and a singer too!

Born on 23-10-1916 at Delhi, his real name was Tarachand Harish Mathur. He was distantly related to Motilal and Mukesh. His father died when he was just 3 year old. He was brought up by his brothers and uncle. He graduated in 1937. After trying and failing in a second hand car business, he decided to enter film world and joined Sagar Movietone, where Motilal was getting established. His first foray into films was in film ‘300 Days And After’. In this film he was uncredited. However he got roles in other films like ‘Postman’, ‘Ladies Only’, ‘Service Limited’, ‘Hum,Tum Aur Woh’, ‘Ek Hi Raasta’, ‘Civil Marriage’, ‘Aurat’, ‘Nai Roshni’, ‘Vijay’, ‘Haqdaar etc. He used to sing also in the films. As a hero his last film was ‘Amaanat’ (1943).

Harish took up direction with film ‘Beda Paar’ (1944), a C grade stunt film, but soon he directed many social films also. In his career he directed 21 films. Some of his films are ‘Toote Taare’ (1948), ‘Ustad Pedro’ (1951), ‘Malhaar’ (1951) (originally Harish was to be the hero, but he gave chance to Arjun), ‘Daku Ki Ladki’ (1954), ‘Laalten’ (1956), Kaali Topi Laal Roomaal’ (1959), ‘Do Ustad’ (1959), ‘Burma Road’ (1962). His last film was ‘Awaara Abdulla’ (1963). Harish acted in 21 films. He sang 39 songs in 16 films (stats by MuVyz). He established his own production company – Omar Khayyam Films. When he was directing film ‘Ustad Pedro’ (1951), he changed the name of actress Nargis Rabadi to Shammi, since another more famous actress of same name was already working in films.

Tara Harish died sometime in 1970.

The heroine Najma was born at Lahore in 1928. Her father was a businessman. Her real name was Naseem. Since there was already one famous actress Naseem, she changed her name. She first worked in ‘Kunwaara baap’ (1942) and ‘Uljhan’ (1942) Then came ‘Nai Zindagi’ (1943), ‘Dr Kumar’ (1944), ‘Piya Milan’ (1945) and last film ‘Naseeb’ (1945). Then she got married and left films.

There was an actor Azaad in this film. His real name was Mohd Hanif. He was born in November 1916 at Delhi in a wealthy family. His father was an electrical engineer and a political leader. His elder brother was in the British Army. Hanif started motor vehicles business in Delhi. He got married also. Due to his desire to act in films, he came to Bombay. His acting career started with ‘Himalaya Ki Beti’ (1938). During this film he got to know Kalyani Bai, the singer actress. Soon they got married. While she did well in films, he was struggling in his career, without credit. In film ‘Haqdaar’ (1946), he was credited with his filmi name Azaad. Frustrated, he left films and went back to Delhi to restart his motor vehicles business. Kalyani brought him back and together they started their own production company – Azad Pictures. However, soon after partition, he and his family migrated to Pakistan. Kalyani stayed back.

There were two Kalyanis and there is always a confusion.

Kalyani Bai (1920-2009) (real name – Zarina) was an actor-singer who was trained in classical singing. She sang khayal, thumri and ghazals for All India Radio and recorded such genre of songs for HMV. This led her to a filmy career in Calcutta in 1934 as an actor-singer. After some struggle, she was employed with New Theatres and she acted in films like ‘Anaath Ashram’ (1937), ‘Mukti’ (1937), and ‘President’ (1937) in which she also sang some songs for herself.

In 1937, Kalyani Bai left New Theatres and joined Ranjit Movietone in Bombay (Mumbai). Her first film with Ranjit Movietone was ‘Toofaani Toli’ (1937). In the 40s, she appeared to have become a free-lancer, although I find that she worked in more films directed by VM Vyas of Sunrise Films than other banners. Her last film as an actor-singer was ‘Ghar’ (1945). However, she lent her voice for other actresses in films released during 1947-54. She also acted in small roles in a few films of 1970s and probably early 80s. She later married Seth Chirauddin Bakar. She had 2 sons and a daughter from him. She retired and settled in Bombay.

Kalyani Das was a playback singer who started her career in Hindi films from Calcutta with PC Barua’s ‘Jawaab’ (1942) and ended her playback singing career in Hindi films with ‘Iran Ki Ek Raat’ (1949). She also sang for a few films made in Bombay. To the best of my knowledge, she did not act in any films.

It is not so difficult to segregate ‘Kalyanis’ as both of them worked in Calcutta at different time. Kalyani Bai worked in films produced in Calcutta up to 1937 whereas Kalyani Das commenced her playback singing career from Calcutta from 1942 onward. She mostly worked for music director Kamal Dasgupta (8 out of 11 Hindi films in which she was playback singer).

‘Haqdaar’ had 9 songs. I have heard some more songs also, but as today’s song is somewhat comical, I have selected this. Name of the singer is not mentioned.